Saturday, November 27, 2010

BLACK FRIDAY!

Some of us decided that we would be a part of the madness on Black Friday. There were a few finds that I researched and we thought it would be worth it to go to Best Buy at 2AM. We were about to set off when we were informed that it was raining outside. We had to bundle up. The crazy part about that is in the daytime it was in the 80s. It got down to 29 degrees before we got into the store. We just about froze our tushes off but we made it.



The brave ones that ventured out in the cold so early in the morning. Sarah Beth, Eric, Micah, and me. Notice the heavy amount of clothes. We really should've had a few more layers.

Below are some of the deals that we got.

We have been thinking of getting a nice camera for a little while now and haven't known exactly what to get. Thanks to the blogger of http://1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com for the suggestion of getting a Canon Rebel XS and Best Buys Black Friday deal, we decided to get this camera. The camera was hard to get. After waiting in line for 3 hours in the cold, Micah had to follow the employees of Best Buy around for a long while before we were told that they couldn't find them and then finally they found them on a top shelf in a box used for shipping with about 6 other cameras, only two of them were this camera. I have a wonderful husband! We also got the new ipod nano. We were looking into something so that I could have music while I was running and this was on sale so we went for it.


Another steal was an HP laptop. This one wasn't for us but for one of our friends. And then Eric got a new phone, the Samsung Fascinate. It was FREE! That was probably the biggest deal to be had.

There were a few other deals that we got on jackets, and a coat, and a pair of jeans, and some movies. I will only do Black Friday again if there's something I really want like this year. It was interesting, fun, COLD, and spontanious.

Thanksgiving Play

While we were inside making lunch/dinner (since there's brunch i'm going to say linner) Brent took the girls outside to play with them to get out some of their energy.


Syssa swinging

Brent was chasing the girls around so this is a picture of Samara running away from him.


Nattie was attached to Brent just about the whole day.

THANKSGIVING

On Thanksgiving day our friends Eric, Brent, Sarah Beth, and my sister in law, Erin, came to our house. We had a good time of games, cooking, talking, crafts, and so much other fun. I am so glad that they were able to come down and see us! They helped to make this Thanksgiving a wonderful one.


Eric helping to cut up onions. I made a cucumber salad and it didn't turn out very well at all. Oh well, I won't be making that next year.


Erin made deviled eggs. She is excellent at it. Thanks Auntie Erin!!!


Sarah Beth was painting the girl's nails and Brent thought it might be fun to paint his nails too. He didn't actually do it but he thought about it.


Beautiful Sarah Beth painting the girl's nails.


The turkey is done! I'm basting the turkey to keep it moist.


So this year the turkey turned out AMAZING. I got just a turkey breast because I didn't think anybody would be coming over for Thanksgiving and it would just be our family of 5. Then I found out that all the others would be coming, which makes me super happy, so I went and bought this bird because there were no other "just" turkey breasts.
I didn't do much special except cut up a whole onion and a whole clove of garlic and stuffed the turkey with it. (We love onion and garlic at our house so this is a WINNER.) Then I poured some olive oil over the top and sprinkled it with garlic powder. Then I cooked it for about 4 1/2 hours. I took the turkey breasts out before I took out the whole turkey because it gone done about 30 minutes faster. It was soooooo good. We even ate some of the onions and especially some of the garlic. It was yummy!

The girls eating. They loved it. My three are definitely good eaters!


The crew at the table.


We had the canned cranberry sauce and Samara made the shape of Texas. This is an upside down Texas. If you turn your head you'll be able to see Texas... at least Samara thought so.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving Pumpkins

I posted the "recipe" to this on my homeschool blog at http://jonesfamhomeschool.blogspot.com/
Check it out. These are just pictures of friends having fun.


Brent and his pumpkin


Erin, my sister in law, eating her pumpkin.


Eric


The girls LOVED their pumpkins.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

A week filled with fun

The girls have this week off of school so we have been having a week (two days so far) filled with fun! We have done a couple crafts and done a lot of catching up on writing letters for Mara. Well, when she went into school at the beginning of the year she knew how to write every letter and place it perfectly on the line. (One of the things we worked on over the summer.) Now she has a hard time remembering where they go. I should've been working with her while she was going to school but I thought she'd be fine because she was in school right? WRONG! Well, all that means is that she will have a few sentences to write when she gets home from school. She has no other homework so I know she'll be able to do this with no problems. Usually she wants to do her Comprehensive Curriculum workbook because Alyssa has homework anyways. Well, hopefully when she gets back to school next week her handwriting will be better than ever... and then next year she will be ready to write stories instead of work on her handwriting.

Anyways, Micah's sister and a couple friends are coming down for Thanksgiving so I'm pretty sure I won't be blogging Wed-Fri... although I haven't blogged for a LOT longer than that before. I'm just starting to get back into this, even if it is just random thoughts. Well, I'll probably post any crafts or things that we do, with pictures, on my homeschooling site... http://jonesfamhomeschool.blogspot.com If I don't get back on here and post before Thanksgiving... HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! (It should really be ThanksLIVING!)

Monday, November 22, 2010

Astro Boy


So along with my new blog I decided that I was going to post movie reviews (which are just my opinions and don't really mean a whole lot). But I thought it would be fun to do.

We watched Astro Boy tonight and at the beginning of the movie I wasn't too sure I was going to like it. It starts of really sad. But it was a pretty good movie all in all. A little suspensful for my girls. Alyssa always has huge eyes and stands up and jumps around when she gets nervous in a movie and there was a lot of that. At the end of the movie though we related it to God. How do you relate ASTRO BOY to GOD you might ask. Well, I'm not! In the movie it talked about the blue energy and the red energy. I asked Alyssa (my 7 year old) what the blue energy in Astro Boy was like, and she immediately said like God. So I asked her what the red energy (the negative energy) was like and she immediately said dark power or Satan. I was quite impressed with her that she made that distinction. The blue energy was only used for good and the red energy was only used for evil. We talked about that almost at the end of the movie. At the very end of the movie the robot gets brought back to life with the blue energy. This was really cool because Alyssa starts lauging and giggling and says just like God brings people back to life. We are going to try and find parallels like that in every movie from now on because she really thought it was cool.

I say it's a good movie. (Samara said it was a boy movie) but I think it was good for all. Although my three year old didn't understand it at all!

Homeschooling

Hey I'm starting a homeschooling blog. We are homeschooling next year and I'd like to do a "yearbook" for the kids and I've heard that you can print out your blog so I'm going to do a homeschooling blog so that I can just print out the blog as their yearbook. The blog site is going to be www.jonesfamhomeschool.blogspot.com This blog will be for family stuff and the other blog will be all about our days homeschooling and what we are doing in that area. It should be quite fun. Check it out!

Ballet


The girls started ballet in September. There are three sisters at a church close to our house that do it as a ministry for free. The girls really love it. Alyssa, Samara, and Nattie were all in different classes to start with until Samara and Alyssa begged me to let them be in the same class so I eventually let them. Nattie is still in the little kid class though.

I have a ton of pictures of Nattie because I stayed in with her the first day for almost the whole time so she wouldn't be nervous. Now I go back and forth half and half between Alyssa and Samara and Nattie's classes.

Nattie doing some sort of pose.








Nattie doing bunny hops.










Nattie kept posing so I kept clicking. I thought she was so cute!






































Here's Samara waiting for her turn to do frog jumps I think.






Outside they love to climb on these rocks. (Thanks to Grandpa Ozzie!!) They decided to try and do ballet on the rocks too. They almost fell off a million times but stayed up long enough for me to get a picture and then I told them they needed to get down.




Mara doing a curtsy.








I think Nattie was trying to do a curtsy too. She couldn't quite get it but she's really cute anyway.









Syssa's elegant curtsy.








Nattie trying to do another curtsy.











I think this is positon one. I don't know for sure since I never took ballet. It looks good though.













Mara's so cute!










Nattie's been really into posing lately. I think it's adorable but at those moments I just want a straight up and down picture or even a candid shot she always poses instead. Oh well. She's such a doll I can't complain.






Chosen Marathon for Adoption

Chosen Marathon For Adoption
I finished my first half marathon on October 23, 2010!!! I'm so excited that I finished the whole thing. This was a fundraiser to help get our girls home.
This picture is of me before I started running. I was about 18 minutes late starting because I had to go to the bathroom before I started running and the line to the women's restroom was, of course, super long. It didn't matter though. There was a chip on our bib number that would start our own personal time when we crossed the starting line. It took a total of 2 hours and 8 minutes to run, I did end up running the whole thing although I didn't think I was going to be able to when I started. I give all the glory to God for that though because when I would start to get tired I would pray or a praise song would come on and I would just somehow keep going.




The three girls waiting for Mommy to get done running. After I fiinished Alyssa said, "that doesn't look so hard!" The funny thing is that Alyssa is the one in the family that is probably the least athletic. It was hilarious!










This is me just about to go over the finish line. I was so disoriented when I was done! I finally found Micah and asked him where he was at while I was crossing the finish line. I didn't know he was right there taking my picture as I finished. He even said good job and everything but I didn't hear any of it. I was fine until I stopped running.







Stretching is very important after you get done running. Nattie thought that it was important that she stretched with me. Sitting and waiting for Mommy for 2 hours and 8 minutes was a lot of work. Micah actually went to the van and had the laptop play a movie and Micah did his homework while they waited. I had my cell phone while I was running (no I didn't think I was going to need it to call for HELP) because my music is on it and so about two miles out I called him and let him know so he'd be at the finish line. I'm glad I did because he would've waited 3 hours because I told him it would take me at least that to finish. Boy was I wrong!


Well, I'm thinking of doing the same run next year (hills and all!). I'm actually really excited about it already for next year. Prayerfully next year we will have our girls with us so they can come up and wait for Mommy too! Thanks for everyone's prayers and support!!!